Nowak drifted back to his team as they prepared to approach yet more sections of the search grid. Banks turned to Annie and Gerry and looked at his watch. ‘Time for a meeting,’ he said. ‘How about an early lunch? The Oak’s not more than a hundred yards over there, and I hear they do a lovely giant Yorkshire pudding stuffed with roast beef. Sorry, Annie.’
Banks watched Annie picking miserably at her vegan burger, made from tofu, beetroot and God only knew what else. At least the juices that dripped from it resembled real blood.
‘Beats me why you lot have to go to great lengths to make pale imitations of meat products, blood and all, when you’re trying to avoid the stuff,’ said Banks.
‘I’m not a vegan,’ Annie said. ‘They’re not my lot. So don’t pick on me!’
Gerry laughed, cut off a lump of Yorkshire pudding and dipped it in her gravy. ‘Look at Gerry,’ Banks said. ‘There’s someone who actually seems to enjoy her food.’
Annie pushed her burger aside. ‘Put me right off my lunch now, you bastards.’
‘I’m sure not eating anything at all is probably even better for you.’
Annie grunted.
Banks knocked back some Dalesview bitter and returned to his meal. They were sitting in the beer garden of The Oak, surrounded by the woods at the corner of Elmet Hill and Cardigan Drive. In one direction, through the branches and pale green leaves, they could see the dark slate roofs of the old Hollyfield Estate, and in the other, the elegant, tree-lined slope of Elmet Hill.
‘I’m beginning to think that maybe we’ve been looking at this case all wrong,’ Banks started.
‘In what way?’ Annie asked.
‘We’ve been assuming all along that it had to do with Blaydon and county lines, and Gashi taking over.’
‘And it doesn’t?’ Gerry said.
‘I’m not so sure.’
‘Well, they’re certainly a part of it,’ Annie countered. ‘We know from what Greg Janson told you that Samir worked the Malton county line for Lenny G, and it’s probably safe to assume he was on his first Eastvale run for Gashi. We also know that Blaydon is connected with the Albanians through the Elmet Centre redevelopment, as well as possibly through drugs and girls, as well as personal history. Samir was seen walking from Eastvale bus station with a backpack the night he was killed, he had been inside Howard Stokes’s house, and Howard Stokes was being cuckooed, a vulnerable drug addict persuaded to let them use his house — rent-free from the Kerrigans — as a distribution centre in exchange for heroin. I don’t see what the problem is, using those facts as our starting point.’
‘That’s all they are, though,’ said Banks. ‘A starting point. And they don’t lead anywhere.’
‘What does?’
‘Have you ever really wondered why anyone might have killed Samir? Gashi or his mob, for example? Or Blaydon? Or Frankie? What motive they might have?’
‘We’ve been over all that,’ Annie said. ‘Because he stole some coke or threatened to talk, and they wanted to use him as an example.’
‘Or because he wanted out?’ Gerry suggested. ‘And he knew too much?’
‘But what could he possibly know?’ Banks said. ‘Yes, he delivered and sold drugs for the Albanians. Maybe he stole a little — though Greg Janson doesn’t think so — but not enough to bring about his murder. Maybe he knew Gashi’s name. But so do we. It’s no secret. What good does that do us? And Gashi knows that, too. It doesn’t matter to him. Besides, the Albanians don’t just stab people, they gut them. Remember Lenny G? No, I can’t really see Samir being a threat to the county line. Remember, he also needed the gig to make money to bring his family over from Syria. The family he didn’t know were all dead.’
‘And maybe pay off the Birmingham gang who helped smuggle him in, too,’ Annie added.
‘OK,’ said Banks. ‘We don’t know much about them, it’s true. Is that another possible direction to look? His smugglers?’
‘Well, I’d ask the same question that you just asked,’ Annie said. ‘And that’s why?’
‘Same answer. He knew too much? He ran away from them? He owed them a lot of money and refused to pay? These people have long memories and a long reach, you know.’
‘But killing him would hardly get them their money back, would it?’ said Gerry. ‘And how would they find him?’
‘I don’t know how. But these organisations rely on terror, Gerry,’ Banks said. ‘You know that. They don’t only rely on the threat of retribution, they rely on the reality of actually carrying it out. Painfully. Sometimes you just have to write off a debt to make a point — and remember, that’s what we thought the murder might be about right from the first. Boy in a wheelie bin. Example. Warning. It’s just a matter of to whom and about what.’
‘So you think it’s this smuggling gang based in Birmingham?’ said Annie.
‘I’m saying it’s a possibility. That’s all. Maybe they traced him and tracked him down.’
‘I suppose it’s just possible,’ Annie agreed. ‘At a pinch.’
‘But you don’t like it as a working theory?’
‘Not really, no. It sounds both too pat and far-fetched at the same time.’
‘I agree,’ said Banks.
‘Then...?’
Banks pushed his plate aside. Already a couple of fat bluebottles seemed interested in the congealing mess. ‘I’m just casting around in the dark, Annie, trying to construct alternative scenarios. And I do have one I’m leaning very much towards, though we’ll need a lot more spadework first, and a bit of luck with the forensics.’
‘What’s that?’
Banks rested back in his chair, careful not to overdo the tilt on the soft grass. ‘We’ve been working on the assumption that Samir was killed because of his connection with county lines, with drugs, or, as I suggested just now, with people smugglers.’
‘So what’s wrong with that?’ Annie asked.
‘Nothing. But it hasn’t got us anywhere, has it?’
‘I don’t know about that, guv,’ Gerry said. ‘It’s thrown up Blaydon, the Kerrigans, Frankie Wallace, all sorts of villains.’
‘But we don’t have any evidence against any of them.’
‘We know from what Frankie told us that Blaydon was definitely involved,’ said Annie.
‘Maybe. At least we know he told us that he got a call from Blaydon asking him to bring Samir out of Hollyfield that night.’
‘That shows that Blaydon was somehow involved, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes. But we’ve suspected that all along, haven’t we, proof or not? Ever since my meeting with Joanna MacDonald, anyway.’ The waitress came and collected their plates and empty glasses. ‘Coffee, anyone?’ Banks asked. They all said yes and Banks went to the bar to order them. As he waited for service, he mulled over the ideas he’d been having as he drove to Eastvale and hung around in the park that morning, and the more he thought, the more he realised there might be something in them. But he — the entire team — would have to reboot and tread carefully.
The bartender said the waitress would deliver their coffees, and when Banks got back to the table he found Annie and Gerry deep in discussion about the traces of blood Stefan Nowak’s team had found in the park.
‘Let’s hope it’s useful,’ Banks said. ‘But in the meantime?’
‘You said you had a new theory,’ Gerry said. ‘Want to share it?’
‘It’s not really new. I’ve just been concentrating a bit more on the actual physical facts we have to work with, rather than the vague relationships, the criminal organisations, the drugs and so on.’
‘And what conclusions have you come to?’ Annie asked.
‘That all we know so far — if we believe Frankie Wallace, which I do — is that Samir was frightened in the house, and when Frankie came in, he bolted. He bolted in the direction of that park over there, and his body ended up in a wheelie bin on the East Side Estate about an hour later. What happened during that hour? We don’t know. What do we think might have happened? The CSIs found blood traces in the park, possibly human, possibly Samir’s. Jazz will be analysing them. I think there’s a very good chance the blood is Samir’s, which means it was more than likely he was killed in the park he ran towards after Frankie entered the house. Well, if Frankie didn’t run after him, find him and kill him, then who did? Who else from the drug operation was in the neighbourhood at the time? Blaydon? Gashi? The Kerrigans?’